Blue Apron vs Hello Fresh

This post is sponsored through my partnership with Blue Apron. They were cool about letting me compare their service with another popular meal delivery service, Hello Fresh. If you’ve been wanting to try Blue Apron, click here to get 3 free meals. (<— First 25 to order) Read on to find out more about Blue Apron vs. Hello Fresh!

As you guys know, I’m a huge fan of meal kit delivery services. We’ve been using Blue Apron in our family for a couple of years now, and the convenience is a game changer. I enjoy trying unique recipes and ingredients, but with services like these, you don’t have to pay for large bottles of ingredients you may not use. I find that it dramatically cuts down on waste, encourages us to try new things, and is a cost savings. Now that we’re in Southern Georgia, which has less grocery store options, healthy food is significantly more expensive. We went to buy some pantry essentials and fruit, and it was $200. We were shocked. Needless to say, buying the ingredients for full dinners is ridiculous. I’m super thankful these exist, especially since it majorly cuts down on errand time.

We’ve been using Blue Apron for quite a while and absolutely love it. Here’s a little bit about Blue Apron if you haven’t heard of it!

About Blue Apron

-Blue Apron allows you to create chef-designed meals at home. All of the ingredients for each recipe are provided, and delivered in an insulated box so everything stays cold and fresh.

–Sustainability is a critical aspect of Blue Apron’s mission. The packaging is easy to recycle, and the ingredients are sourced from responsible farmers and fisherman all over the US. You can read more about their recycling plan here.

MY OTHER VIDEOS

-They’re always adding new recipes to the rotation, and you can pick between the 2-person or family plan. Each recipe takes less than 40 minutes to prepare

I was excited to give Hello Fresh a try in an effort to switch things up a bit!

-Both companies send you everything you need to create the meals at home

-The price is the same (both services are $59.94 per week for 3 recipes on the 2-person plan)

-They include step-by-step recipes and color photos

-Nutrition information and wine pairings are included

-I found both services to provide generous serving sizes, and the recipes were similar to make as far as difficulty goes

Blue Apron Ginger Beef Stir Fry

How Blue Apron and Hello Fresh are Different

-For Hello Fresh, you can choose your recipes. With Blue Apron, you can input settings (for example, I always put no pork on ours) and they surprise you from there

-The delivery days are different. Hello Fresh usually arrives on Monday, and I’ll receive Blue Apron on Wednesday or Thursday

Blue Apron vs. Hello Fresh: My verdict

I like the fact that Hello Fresh Arrives earlier in the week. Usually I have the gusto to make our dinners towards the beginning of the week, and by the end of the week, I’m ready to go out with friends or get takeout. When we get Blue Apron, we shuffle our plans around a little bit so we’re cooking towards the end of the week. (Usually this means that the Pilot makes at least one recipe, which is awesome.)

I feel like both services have fresh ingredients and they were similarly packaged. I did think it was wasteful of Hello Fresh to include enormous sheets with the nutrition information with ALL of the recipes for that week (so I got large sheets of paper for recipes I didn’t make). Blue Apron tucks the small nutrition sheet into a tiny envelope. I felt like recycling the packaging for both services is fairly easy.

When I was comparing the products in my mind, I was curious to see which one we’d prefer as we opened the packages. Hello Fresh uses cute branded ingredient packaging, and the recipes looked pretty good. I felt like I was already used to the beautiful Blue Apron branding, with full color photos on the recipe how-tos.

As far as the recipes and actual meals go, the Hello Fresh recipes were good, but nothing blew me away. It didn’t feel special to me, and all of the recipes we tried (sriracha turkey burgers, soy-marinated steak, and Spanish-style cod with chickpeas) felt like something I could have made on my own.

The sriracha turkey burgers were my favorite thing we tried, but all three recipes felt bland and like they were missing something.

Blue Apron recipes always blow us away, and feel like something we’d get from a restaurant. I feel like if you’re going to take the time to make dinner, it should be something delicious that you truly enjoy.

If you’ve been wanting to try Blue Apron, they kindly offered 3 free meals to the first 25 readers to order here.

Thank you so much for reading, and hope you have a wonderful day!

What are your thoughts on Blue Apron vs. Hello Fresh?

Have you tried any meal kit delivery services? Which one is your favorite?

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56 Comments

Mikion May 31, 2017 at 4:56 am

We love Blue Apron and agree the recipes are unique and innovative. We also tried Plated which was similar to your experience with Hello Fresh. I liked that I could choose recipes but generally found the meals simple and something I would do on my own. I would like to try Green Chef or one of the boxes with organic focus.

Why don’t you just set your delivery date to another day? We set ours to deliver on Mondays. I love Blue Apron and I totally agree with your assessment. Hello Fresh was good, but the recipes are definitely much simpler.

Have you tried Sun Basket? I’ve really been enjoying their boxes and I personally think the recipes are delicious. Like you said, if you’re going to take the time – it needs to be something you really enjoy!
Unfortunately, we just relocated over the weekend and Sun Basket delivers to this area on Wednesdays instead of Mondays. I really prefer the Monday delivery date too!

I completely agree about Hello Fresh’s meals! With Blue Apron, they seemed restaurant quality and I even learned some techniques from their recipes. My husband could always tell it was a Blue Apron meal because it was a fancier dinner than usual.

With Hello Fresh I felt like I could have thrown together the same things in my own. My husband was always surprised to hear it was from them and not something I created.

I feel like if I’m paying for a meal service, I want the meals to be special and different than what I would normally cook.

yes, totally agree about the new techniques! i feel like a chef when i make blue apron meals 😉
the hello fresh meals were underwhelming. i was excited to have something new in the rotation, but i canceled it right away

You can adjust the delivery date for Blue Apron meals, all you have to do is select the ‘manage’ tab when you’re looking at the meal for that week! I’ve tried both BA and Hello Fresh, and agree- the BA meals are a bit ‘fancier’, if you will, without having a ton of work involved. I also like that they recently revamped their meal sheets so that they are easier to follow and read. The only real downside is that some of them require quite a bit of meal prep, which can be hard if you’re the only one at home with a young child (my son is 18m). Also, some of the meals require quite a few pans, but not all of them.

i had no idea you could do this! i’m so glad you guys told me 🙂 thank you!
and yes, i agree on the prepping. if the girls aren’t entertaining themselves, it’s pretty much hopeless to make dinner unless tom is home haha

We tried Blue Apron for a few weeks and honestly weren’t that impressed – tasted a little bland to us. So we tried Sunbasket because they have gluten-free and paleo options, and were absolutely blown away by how much more flavorful they were. They are a bit pricier at $70/week for the two person plan, but in my opinion worth.

Love this comparison! There are SO many meal kit delivery services out there, I am overwhelmed. This helps narrow it down. Also–do you happen to know where your denim shorts are from? They’re the perfect length and soooo cute. Thanks!

After reading your review I find myself to be quite confused by some of your comparisons. For some background, I have been using meal kit delivery services for over a year at this point, with BlueApron and HelloFresh accounting for nearly all deliveries. For instance, you discuss delivery days as a pro/con while my options for both service is the same… I opt to receive my deliveries on Friday and every service has offered this along with many other day options, usually the same (some times seem to eliminate Monday). Your description of menu options also seems off, I’ve not seen that level of lock in with Blue Apron – as a non vegetarian we can opt for 2 meat and 1 fish or 1 vegetarian meal; With HelloFresh I think there are 8 meals to choose from each week in the non-veg option.
What I DO agree with is that Blue Apron does tend to have a higher success in delivering incredible tasting meals. Given that, I have felt Blue Apron also has a tendency to fall into ruts with periods of rather bland/average meals. I was for a very long time a hard core supporter of Blue Apron, but over time and recent changes to HelloFresh I started opting for the HelloFresh meals due to the variety of options. HelloFresh also recently introduced “premium” meals which cost $10 more a week to receive and some have been quite good, though I would be hard pressed to say there is real value there in the $10 extra.

TL;DR – I find your review to be “overlooking” some key points, and am very suspicious that the real motivation is to receive referral credits, and not give a real review of each offering. There are pro’s and con’s to each service, and many others tat I have tried (such as Green Chef, which is WAY more expensive, but if you have particular dietary requirements could be worth it, or the tons of other options out there such as Terra’s Kitchen, Peach Dish, Home Chef, etc….etc…..etc…

i had no idea you could change the days. i definitely need to do that!
interesting to know about the premium option; i don’t remember seeing that!
and just wanted to be transparent that i don’t receive any referral credits for sponsored posts with blue apron- i’m just happy to share a discount code for those who have been wanting to try it. we get a free box for my post, and the rest of the time, we pay for it out of pocket because we really love it

Thanks for clarifying. That said, I am assuming you got a Blue Apron box for free and paid for Hello Fresh. Which, in my mind, doesn’t really make it a fair comparison to begin with…
I’ve tried both and basically found that for the cost, I could be eating or ordering from some pretty high-end restaurants, and for the waste produced (packaging spices individually for example), I could just do my own shopping…

After I posted I realized i may have sounded critical of trying to get referrals, which I am not – more I wish I could. 🙂 I apologize if it came off as such. Blue Apron has a referral program, but it has been in testing for quite some time. They opened it up to at least more people fr a limited time awhile back. Anyway, on to the discussion:

Re: HelloFresh premium meals. There are some possible reasons for not seeing it. Some subscriptions have the premium meal “included”, which is, quite frankly, a rip-off. You pay an extra $10 per box, but they don’t even show you which recipes are premium, and you pay it whether or not use choose that meal. The other option is to pay the standard price, and then the premium meals are labeled as such, and if you choose one that week you get charged $10 extra dollars. (See why the included plan is a crock??) I would say we order a premium meal maybe 20-30% of the time. This weeks premium meal was Strip Steak Bearnaise with Creamed Kale and Rosemary Potatoes.

Here’s something I picked up on through research and really like: A number of people subscribe to multiple services and then pick the meals they think sound the best each week and skip the other services. So I have active subscriptions to HelloFresh and Blue Apron. Last week we liked the Blue Apron meals more (in fact I am cooking the Spicy Korean Style Chicken as I type this), and this week we got HelloFresh. I find trying to juggle more than 2 subscriptions to be too much work, but your mileage may vary.

I use to think HelloFresh in general was a noticeable step down from Blue Apron, but after they stopped the Jamie Oliver meals, and added premium (and now breakfast) meals, they seem to have a philosophical change that has really improved their offerings. I really like the variety offered each week, and the fact that I can get 3 meat based meals if I choose that week.

As for Blue Apron, I still think they have some great meals. We typically choose the vegetarian option over the seafood and consistently find their vegetarian dishes to be terrific. We really enjoyed the asparagus and summer squash curry this week!

hey girl,
no worries at all! it didn’t seem like that but i wanted to make sure that readers knew that i didn’t get any credits from the post
i love the idea to subscribe to different services and choose the one for each week with the menu you like. i could definitely see myself doing something like that instead of going dark on different services at different times
xo

I tried both and had the same thought – Hello Fresh was just bland and boring compared to Blue Apron. ALSO: it was almost impossible for me to cancel Hello Fresh. They made it really hard to do and I got charged more times because of that. That more than anything turned me off of Hello Fresh.

In total I’ve tried 5 delivery kit services. Hello fresh was bottom of the list and blue apron was number one.

I’ve been a diehard Blue apron fan but haven recently started to wonder about some other options! I love Blue Apron..but sometimes I just don’t have the time for all the prep. thanks for doing the hard work for me so I could compare! Maybe I did make the right choice 🙂

There are some options out there that come prepped, do some research and you will likely find some. When we tried Green Chef (Warning: expensive!) some of their ingredients came prepped. There are TONS of options out there now, with the biggest challenge being whether or not they deliver to your area.

I’m always interested in these services but since I have a family of six, it’d break the bank for me to buy the meals. I’m pretty good with shopping and meal planning BUT I would love to try out Blue Apron recipes if they had an option to buy just recipes – Blue apron cookbook??. I love the concept though, and when we travel having a blue apron delivery seems like an amazing idea! And a big money saver. Eating out for six is ridiculous.

I have tried both and I find that I like Hello Fresh better than Blue Apron in terms of cook time and clean-up. I feel as if Blue Apron takes a lot longer to cook and I am using every pot and pan in my kitchen to make one meal. To be fair though, I am a vegetarian so I can only speak to that specific plan for each service. I really enjoy subscribing to meal delivery boxes each week. My husband and daughter are not vegetarian so using a meal delivery service for my meals helps to get dinner on the table that much faster. I don’t have to meal plan and everything is ready in ~30 min. Thanks for your honest opinion and breaking down what works/doesn’t work for your family.

Thank you for the comparison. We recently jumped in on the meal delivery service wagon with Blue Apron and from someone who doesn’t get overly excited about food…I found myself constantly commenting on how amazing and flavorful everything was. We have ours delivered on Friday so we don’t have to decide what we are cooking for dinner on the weekends. Bonus the food feels like it is on the gourmet side so it becomes a nice break from routine. Blue Apron is definitely doing it right.

I really think you should change this post to reflect that you didn’t understand how to properly use the websites. Also, of course Blue Apron is going to be “cool” about you comparing their meal delivery service to another one; they know you’re going to write something positive so you keep getting sponsored posts!

of course i’m going to write something positive, because i like the service and only partner with brands i use and love. i was honestly hoping i would have liked hello fresh, too, but it was a bust.
and yes, i definitely need to get better at using those internets 🙂

Yeah, but you’ve been using Blue Apron for months now and just got one Hello Fresh delivery. Honestly Blue Apron is ACTIVELY encouraging their influencers to make comparison posts and syndicating them out and it’s kind of rubbing me the wrong way. I understand the business space is competitive but you must realize that with some skin in the game, the bias is much more prevalent and obvious to your readers.

I started with Blue Apron, so I may have a bias as far as what to expect in recipes, packaging, and results. The Ingredients of both were similar, and far fresher than I can get this time of year locally. I liked the packaging of Hello Fresh just a little better, as they bundled the ingredients together by recipe. With Blue Apron, my first chore was to unpack and repack so my ingredients were within a reach. Blue Apron has far better, tastier, more unique recipes. This can’t be stated enough! Hello Fresh came up short in taste, using few seasonings, and the techniques/instructions were not as accurate as Blue Apron. I will remain with Blue Apron!

I agree. I’ve used Blue Apron for a long time, but was excited to possibly add something new into the rotation. The Hello Fresh recipes didn’t impress us at all. Blue Apron meals always feel and taste special 🙂

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Hi, gorgeous! I'm so glad you're here. Welcome to The Fitnessista, a healthy lifestyle blog emphasizing quick workouts, quick recipes and adventures as a wife and mom. Though I am a certified personal trainer, group fitness instructor and weight loss specialist, the information posted here is not intended to substitute the advice of a medical professional. Please check out the about page for more info. Thank you for reading! ❤️